A Florida toddler was found dead after his father mistakenly thought he dropped his son off at daycare — only to make the horrifying discovery hours later that he left the toddler inside his sweltering hot car.
First responders were called to the early childhood education center, A World of Discovery Academy, in Plantation — a suburb about 6 miles outside of Fort Lauderdale — on Monday at around 5:30 p.m. after receiving a “report of a deceased child in a vehicle,” Plantation Police posted on X.
“Upon arrival, Plantation Fire Department sadly confirmed the child was deceased,” police said.
Leslie Novoa, the academy’s director and owner, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel the victim was an 18-month-old boy who attended the bilingual early education center.
Novoa told the outlet that the boy’s father was supposed to drop him off at school that morning — but forgot his son was still in the car and went to work.
When the father returned in the afternoon to pick up his son, he realized the child had never been dropped off.
The academy director said she then opened the back door of the father’s car and found the boy in the back seat — prompting her to call 911 immediately.
“This is a tragedy that happened to them and to all of us,” Novoa told the outlet, describing the boy and his parents as a “wonderful family.”
The Plantation Police Department said it has opened a death investigation.
Temperatures in Plantation reached a high of 94 degrees on Monday, with the afternoon heat index sweltering at 102 degrees, according to AccuWeather.
The tragedy marks the third hot car death involving a child in 2026.
A 3-year-old boy died after being unknowingly left in a hot car in Hillsborough County by his father on June 20, WFLA reported.
The father told deputies that he found his 3-year-old unresponsive in a vehicle parked outside the home.
That case remains under investigation.
About two weeks earlier, Scott Allen Gardner, 33, allegedly locked his 18-month-old son, Sebastian, inside his truck when he freshened up his ‘do and stopped at Hanky Panky’s Lounge in Ormond Beach, Florida, on June 6, police said.
The toddler was left alone inside the blistering vehicle for more than three hours as temperatures outside soared to 92 degrees.
The father allegedly gave police multiple false accounts of what happened before his son’s death — and was arrested days later after police tracked him down to his mother’s home in Ormond Beach, the sheriff’s office said.
Since 1990, more than 1,100 children have died in hot cars in the United States, with 88% of the deaths nationwide being children 3 years old or younger, according to statistics provided by the Kids and Car Safety organization.
On average, 40 children die each year from heatstroke inside a vehicle across the nation. At least another 7,500 kids have survived with varying degrees of injury.
From 1990 to 2024, 123 of those deaths were in Florida.
The organization warns that cars will experience the “greenhouse effect” when outside temperatures exceed 80 degrees.
Even with the windows cracked, temperatures inside a car can reach 125 degrees in minutes, doing nothing to slow the deadly heating process.